Pride, Prejudice and Profile Pics
by Adriana Florenze
Summary: Sometimes technology screws you over. Other times, technology is the most useful thing ever. Particularly for, you know, stalking purposes.


Elizabeth Bennet, who took great pride in her ability to multi-task even whilst undertaking highly skilled activities, was curled up in her father's favourite armchair watching reruns of The Biggest Loser while simultaneously scrolling through her Instagram feed on her very weathered iPhone. She had been home from university for almost five weeks now and any plans for being productive had flown out the window. She suddenly found herself an avid follower of Season 1 of the Biggest Loser USA for reasons she could not explain given that the show was some 10 years old, set somewhere across the Atlantic and realistically speaking, it wasn't exactly quality television. Although she had many times fended off her father's repeated questioning about why on earth she would watch "that crap" and several other rude, non-PC comments with claims that the show encouraged her to try to be more fit, she had yet to go for a brisk walk, much less a jog. The one time she had in fact gathered the will to put on her shorts and trainers, she'd made it to the front door before realising the fine London summer's day had become a bit of a downpour.

After celebrating the culmination of four years of studying French and Spanish at the University of Edinburgh with both her parents in tow, Elizabeth had packed up her possessions, waved a teary goodbye to bonnie Scotland and spent ten hours in a car with the parents bickering and nagging and Elizabeth gritting her teeth and trying not to kill them as they made the journey back to London. Since then she had been passing time until she began her further study in translation and interpretation before one day she fulfilled her dream of working at the UN... or you know, just getting any job.

As riveting as it was watching people hold up bunches of balloons while standing on bales of hay, Elizabeth's attention was diverted from the TV to her phone as amongst the cat, photos and beach photos she actually saw the image of a pair of humans. It appeared one of her old school classmates had a really cute boyfriend. Or just a guyfriend... it was hard to tell from the one photo. Looking at the entirety of her feed though, Elizabeth came to the conclusion that he was in fact a boyfriend.

Of her school friends, Elizabeth was only really in touch with Charlotte Lucas who she was on and off when they were both in London. However, this friend of hers, a girl called Darcy Gardiner-Reynolds, she hadn't seen for several years, although they had been good friends at school. A couple of nostalgic school memories was all it took to convince Elizabeth to initiate contact with the girl once more. Opening up the Facebook Messenger app on her phone, Elizabeth quickly typed out a message and an invitation to meet if she was in London.

_Darcy! It's been absolutely ages and I've deffos been remiss not keeping in touch. Hope you're doing alright but it certainly looks like you are from the nice looking man holding you close in all your recent insta photos ;) If you're in London these days I'd love to see you. Chaz is town as well and so maybe we could all meet! xxx_

Elizabeth hit send and snapped her attention back to the Biggest Loser eliminations. Maurice needed to lose at least 7kg and it was just not looking all that hopeful. Her phone made the annoying beeping noise signalling a new message but she silenced it, more concerned by the fact that it seemed Maurice was going to go.

When some time later, the episode ended, Elizabeth went to look at the message and her brow furrowed with confusion.

_I'm certain I don't know you and I don't know why you would send me such a familiar message. I don't have instagram either. I'd appreciate it if you didn't contact me again._

It took a few minutes before Elizabeth worked out that due to her entrancement with the Biggest Loser, she'd just typed in Darcy and assumed the top one was the right one, her old school friend. She hadn't even looked at the message again once she'd hit send. This Darcy didn't even appear to be female. He appeared to be a formidable looking man in a suit from his profile photo. Darcy wasn't even his first name. Oops.

Elizabeth began typing up an apologetic response and explanation before she realised that actually, his message had been quite rude. She probably shouldn't have replied at all, but annoyed by this strangers attitude she tried to construct a coldly polite and snarky response.

_My message was intended for someone else. Sorry to have interrupted your existence with it. Don't worry, I had no interest in contacting you again, and after your message there's nothing I want less._

The guy seemed like a real douche. She clicked on his profile hoping to confirm her suspicions. She was surprised though to discover that she had a mutual friend with the rude stranger, and even more so to learn that it was her older sister's dorky boyfriend Charlie. Jane's boyfriend Charlie was a harmless guy, he was sweet and friendly and he blushed bright red whenever he made eye contact with Jane in public. Elizabeth got along with him quite well, although she had only seen him occasionally when visiting London. Now that she had moved back and Jane and Charlie were moving in together she expected to see more of him. She decided to ask Charlie about this 'Will Darcy' when she next saw him. He was probably someone Charlie new from work, no way he'd be friends with a prick like that.

Looking at his profile the guy had been tagged in a whole lot of photos with Caroline Bingley, who Elizabeth knew to be Charlie's older sister. She concluded that that must be the connection. There were several photos with Charlie in them as well. Rudeboy Darcy stuck out in the photo of him standing rigidly between Charlie and Caroline and their fiery orange hair. Darcy had dark curls in a very Kit Harrington way and piercing grey eyes. He would actually be pretty hot if he hadn't been such a douche.

Elizabeth's phone pinged again and she realised there was a further message from Darcy.

_You were the one to have erroneously messaged me, not vice versa, so I think your rudeness is misplaced._

This guy was beginning to seem like a real knob. How could he even think of accusing her of being rude after his initial message? And seeing that her message had been sent at 19:03 and his was received at 19:09 why had it taken him 6 minutes to construct that one sentence. Moron. Elizabeth didn't even think to restrain herself from replying.

_Pot, Kettle._

She saw the 'Seen' indicatior and the two ticks appear immediately and she smirked as she imagined him reading her response. Looking at Darcy's profile again, Elizabeth quickly surmised that other than being tagged in lots of Caroline's photos, the rest of his profile was covered in posts from an elderly looking woman called Catherine De Bourgh. Whoa. At a quick glance it looked like she shared at least 3 posts a day with him. There was one about the benefits of aloe vera, another about the importance of maintaining a consistent sleep cycle, a further one a terrifying article about spider eggs found in banana and it just went on and on. And it didn't seem like she'd been hacked or anything, she was actually leaving little comments with each of these shares. Including "_this is why you should only shop from Waitrose dear, they have far more quality checks than those other supermarkets._"

Elizabeth was beginning to form a clearer idea of who this rude Waitrose-shopper Darcy man was. And it wasn't pleasant.

Another ping notified Elizabeth of yet a further reply.

_I'd like to remind you that you stated you had no wish to contact me again. Goodbye._

Seven minutes for that gem. As much as she wanted to type some choice words to him, Elizabeth didn't want the guy to have the satisfaction of thinking she wanted to contact him. Instead she closed messenger and went back to looking at his profile. It appeared that Catherine Du Bourgh had listed herself as his aunt. Elizabeth was never so glad that her aunts and uncle referred to the social networking site as either "The Facebooks", "Facebox" or "Satan".

Elizabeth noticed the little red sign showing she had three new notifications. One of them was for a new wall post from a guy she'd met on a night out, George Wickham. He'd seemed charming at first and she'd actually quite liked him, but as he became more and more intoxicated and hence more and more uninhibited she soon discovered the guy was a real creep. Apparently he was hoping to see her again soon. Yeah... no. She was waiting for an opportune moment to delete him from her friends list.

Two notifications were from an old classmate Collin asking her to join Farmville. That was after about 365 notifications in the past year of the same nature. And the occasional one from him asking her to join CandyCrush just to mix things up. Looking at Collin's profile she was amused to find that he had shared almost the exact same articles as Darcy's Aunt Catherine on his own page. Right down to the one about how soaking your feet in iced tea could combat foot odour. Delightful.

It finally occurred to her that maybe she should look up Darcy, her friend, the female and try to get that message to her, but she was surprised to discover that Darcy Gardiner-Reynolds no longer existed on Facebook. Elizabeth made a mental note to ask Charlotte if she still had Darcy's phone number before deciding it was about time she took a shower.

* * *

Darcy had been annoyed to receive Elizabeth's message. He had been even more annoyed when she had been rude to him. But what annoyed him most was how for the next few days he kept going back and looking at her profile. Her profile picture was of her in a cap and a gown holding a bouquet of flowers, obviously having graduated from university. She looked pretty cute with a big smile and sparkly eyes, he had to admit that much.

Really though, she seemed like a complete weirdo. How did she even manage to send him that message was one thing he couldn't fathom. They weren't even Facebook friends. She claimed she'd intended it for another Darcy, but really, how many Darcys were there out there? She didn't even have a Darcy in her Facebook friends list, he knew because he'd checked. She did however have George Wickham as a friend and that guy was a slimeball if there ever was one, he knew from experience having shared a flat with him while in university halls of residence in his first year.

The girls messages to him had been downright rude, but he hadn't even liked her original message. She seemed to be making a fuss of some guy in this mythical other-Darcy's photos. To Darcy, congratulating her friend on her conquest to him, reeked of desperation and reminded him of something his best friend Charlie's sister Caroline might do. Ugh, Caroline was a piece of work. She was constantly tagging him in photos with her as if she was waiting to be congratulated for having a photo with an above-average looking male herself. Honestly between Caroline's photos and his Aunt Catherine and her incessant sharing of Daily Mail articles he was almost ready to deactivate.

When Darcy saw Charlie a few days later for lunch, he related the whole saga to his closest friend. Charlie was as might have been expected, extremely amused. He had laughed heartily as he read through the messages on Darcy's phone. Darcy was shocked to learn that Rude Elizabeth was actually the sister of Charlie's girlfriend Jane. He'd met Jane on several occasions and she was anything but rude. She was extremely polite, soft spoken and seemed to have a pleasant nature. Although he couldn't claim to know Jane very well, he'd grown to like her. Initially he'd found her hard to read and he'd worried that her feelings for Charlie weren't as strong as his for her. Charlie never did anything by halves and Darcy knew his friend was pretty much in love by week one. But he slowly realised that Jane was quiet and he was quiet and as such they'd never really had in depth conversations, so why would she tell him she loved Charlie anyway. It soon became clear though from the way she flushed whenever they made eye contact that she certainly wasn't indifferent to Charlie as he had originally worried.

Charlie had tried to convince Darcy that Elizabeth was a nice girl and that he'd like her once he got to know her, but Darcy was a stubborn one, insisting the girl was rude and that he would never find her likeable in any way. Charlie had laughed at his friend, and laughed even more at Darcy's expression when he informed him that the way things were going with himself and Jane, Darcy would likely be meeting Elizabeth sooner rather than later. Charlie and Jane were moving in together and he confided in Darcy his elaborate plan to propose to her as they unpacked their boxes on their first night in their new place. He'd announced that the final box she unpacked would be the smallest one of them all and inside of it would be another cushioned box. Inside that other cushioned box, Jane would find a ring, and she would turn around to find Charlie kneeling and ready to ask her to marry him. He'd ended the explanation with a dreamy sigh, and Darcy couldn't help smirking at his dorky friend.

Darcy was not a very active Facebooker. Honestly he wasn't the most social of people and as such a social network really wasn't his domain. But he found himself checking on it more and more often, and he'd become quite proficient with using all the tools and functions it provided. He'd one day discovered a way to ensure that he had to confirm any tags of himself on photos. He'd also secretly reported his Aunt Catherine citing his reason as being that she posted spam. She'd then been blocked by Facebook, an outcome that had made him highly popular with his sister and their cousins.

More often than not he found himself viewing Elizabeth's Facebook profile. Darcy was getting better at navigating it and as such he'd learned a lot more about her. It appeared that Elizabeth had recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh, and by the congratulations on her profile picture, it sounded like she'd gotten a 1st. Perhaps she wasn't as vapid and desperate as he'd concluded from her initial message. He'd also found out by looking at the groups she was in that she'd been president of her university's debating society and that she was part of the squash club.

Elizabeth's profile listed her as being able to speak English, French, Spanish, Arabic, German and Sinhalese. Darcy had been highly skeptical until he'd seen that she had 'liked' the pages of films in all those languages. Except English. He begrudgingly admitted to himself that speaking six languages might be considered admirable by some. From her Facebook profile, Elizabeth was starting to seem like less of a weirdo to Darcy. She was surrounded by normal happy looking people in most of her cover photos, standing in front of backdrops of foreign landscapes he'd never set eyes on before.

When one day he'd received a Facebook message, Darcy had almost been hopeful that it was Elizabeth trying to start a fight with him again. He'd been disappointed to discover it was actually from his cousin Richard with a link to a Buzzfeed post entitled "23 reasons dating is good for the soul". Darcy had responded with a Buzzfeed post that claimed to have "17 creative ways to tell people to mind their own business". Richard had replied within seconds, saying "I hadn't expected a reply from you, at least not within the next 6 months, let alone a Buzzfeed article in response! Has your lil sister been teaching you how to use technology?" causing Darcy to grumble to himself displeased by his cousin's assumptions.

A few days later Darcy was wrangled into helping Charlie transport some of his old furniture across town to the new place he shared with Jane. His friend was almost effervescing with excitement about his proposal that was in store for that very evening. When Darcy had enquired as to Jane's whereabouts that afternoon, Charlie had chuckled and stated she'd taken a quick trip to Argos with Elizabeth. He might have added the words "your arch-nemesis" at the end. Darcy had rolled his eyes and told his friend that he'd forgotten all about her. "If things go well tonight, you'll be seeing her soon!" he'd warned his friend, while thinking back in amusement to how he'd made a similar statement to Elizabeth earlier that week.

Sure enough, that evening Jane accepted Charlie's proposal. It was only another few days more before Darcy found himself attending their joint housewarming/engagement celebration. On the Facebook event page that Jane had invited him to, now that they were friend, she was referring to it as a housegagement party. Darcy happened to notice that Elizabeth was also invited and had confirmed her attendance.

* * *

It had been quite strange to actually meet Darcy at the housegagement party. They'd been formally introduced by Charlie, but beyond that Darcy and Elizabeth, or as Charlie called them, the two arch-nemeses, hadn't spoken. At first Elizabeth had decided this was Rudeboy being rude, but after glancing at him several times during the evening she realised he barely spoke to anyone aside from Charlie and spent most of his time looking like a deer in the headlights standing in the corner by the refreshment table. When she'd made this comment to Charlie he'd laughed heartily at her description of his best friend, and jokingly scolded her, telling her to take pity on the poor social recluse.

Elizabeth had eyed him warily, taking in his dapper appearance in his dark slacks and a striped shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up. She momentarily hoped that she looked as good in her powder blue lace skater dress. She smiled at him from across the room when he caught her eye, and his eyes widened slightly further before he returned her smile hesitantly. Elizabeth couldn't help her smile widening further when she caught sight of his dimples and Darcy seemed taken aback.

From his vantage point he thought Elizabeth looked quite lovely. Although he didn't find it strangely unnatural that her hair was so shiny and her eyes were so sparkly. He noticed the way that nobody else seemed to find her rude at all, and in fact people seem to flock to her. She spent most of the evening engaged in conversation with one person or another and Darcy regretted at the end of the night when aside from a short hello, he'd not spoken to her, heatedly or otherwise. He was however pleasantly surprised by the warm smile she'd given him. At first he'd wondered if there was someone behind him, but given that he was almost pressed into the corner of the room, he sincerely doubted that was possible.

When he got home that evening he'd decided to take the plunge and message her on Facebook again.

_Hi Elizabeth. It was lovely to actually meet you tonight. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for my part in our previous conversation here, I realise now that I was really unnecessarily rude to you. In my defence until recently I've not been an avid user of Facebook and if being honest I'm perhaps not the most socially inclined of people. Your initial message just perplexed and concerned me and I suppose that's the only excuse I can offer. I wanted to come over and apologise to you tonight in person, and make amends, but your conversation was certainly in demand. Perhaps I might apologise to you over coffee one day, and show you I'm not quite such a beast?_

He added an xx to the end. Then he removed it. Then he added it again. Not long later he replaced it with a smiley face. He was about to put in a single x when he accidentally hit send. Apparently it wasn't so difficult to have mishaps with Facebook messenger.

Darcy was thrilled when not 6 minutes later he received both a response and a friend request from Elizabeth. He was happy to read that she would be more than happy to join him for coffee, on the condition that she could apologise too. He was even happier that he now had even more of her profile to investigate.

Elizabeth was surprised to say the least when she discovered a message from Will Darcy the night after Jane's party and more so at the content of the message. Another surprise for her was how well the pair got a long when they got around to having their coffee apologies a short time later. What surprised and bemused her most though, was when a few months later Darcy Gardiner-Reynolds liked a date-night Instagram of Elizabeth and **her** Darcy.

_**The End**_

* * *

**~ A/N:** Today, this happened to me. A stranger sent me a very obscure message. Our only mutual friend was my strange Aunt. But the world is too small, and I'm fairly certain that I know the person he mentioned in the message and the one he intended to send it to. Anyway, it got me thinking...


End file.
